


Dissolution

by thingsbaker



Series: Dissolution [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 19:59:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3741796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsbaker/pseuds/thingsbaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In finding Sherlock another assistant, John gets more than he bargained for. Originally published on LiveJournal in 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before the end of Season 2, sometime in 2011, so there are spoilers more for the book version of Reichenbach than the TV version.

It’s a beautiful day in early May, and they are spending it at the morgue. Sherlock has decided that the first gorgeous, clear-skied day in two weeks is the perfect day to experiment with the rate at which acid will speed decomposition. Molly had been kind enough to set aside a few corpses for Sherlock before she left on a well-deserved vacation on the continent, and weather be damned, he apparently must take advantage of the opportunity.  
  
John can’t fully explain his own presence in the morgue. He could be out doing something better; he’s just not sure what. Sit in a park and read? Not likely. Take a stroll? They’ll probably do that on the way home, and there’s probably going to be curry involved, if he waits Sherlock out. He’s been with the man for five years, now; he knows better than to think a sunny day might have any effect on what Sherlock’s going to do, and he knows himself well enough to know that he’d rather be with Sherlock than without. So he’s sat in Molly’s abandoned office, reading a new mystery novel, while Sherlock is dripping various chemical agents onto bodies in the theater. He has bad coffee and a bit of a headache from the fumes, but it’s not the worst way he’s spent the day recently.  
  
The doors to the morgue swing open a few minutes later, and John looks up to see who might be coming in. Molly does the night shift, still, so he still sees her the most often, but he knows the day men, too. They all think Sherlock’s a weirdo, and John gets to his feet, prepared to head them off. Molly hadn’t mentioned that they’d be subbing for her.  
  
It’s not one of the day men, though; it’s a younger woman, someone John’s never seen before. She’s extremely pretty, he notices first, almost involuntarily; she’s wearing a calf-length, tight black skirt with tights that still somehow make obvious the tone of her long, shapely legs; she’s got on sturdy but stylish black sandals and a vivid green top that cuts a flattering V between her breasts. Her skin is a creamy copper color and her hair is a reddish-brown that strikes John as natural. Sherlock will be able to tell him, unless she’s about to turn screaming.  
  
“That smells terrible,” John hears her say. Her voice is throaty but cheerful enough. “Sulfur?”  
  
“No,” Sherlock says, but he says nothing else.  
  
The woman leans closer. “Magic acid, really?” she says. “Haven’t seen that since Germany.”  
  
Sherlock looks up at her, just a brief glance, and his eyes narrow. John clears his throat from the doorway. “Ah,” the woman says. “I’m Lauren Willis. Did Molly mention – well, probably not. I’m here assisting her.”  
  
“Hardly,” Sherlock says, and Lauren smiles.  
  
“Of course I’ve heard all about you,” she says, looking between them. Her gaze lingers on Sherlock a few seconds too long. John is used to this; three years as Sherlock’s lover have nearly worn the jealousy out of him. Sherlock doesn’t care enough to even notice, most of the time, and John has tried to learn the same restraint.  
  
“Anyway, I’ll let you finish,” she says. “I’m just coming in to get Mr. Graber.” She grins and offers a cheery wave to John as she heads toward the main cooler. “Let me know if you’ll need a PTFE container for the clothes, yeah?”  
  
Sherlock pauses again, mid-dripping, and then he nods just once. She’s thought of something he hasn’t.  
  
“Interesting,” he says later, when they’re walking home. They’ve already had the curry, and John is feeling a little mellow after two beers.  
  
“She was bloody gorgeous and you know it,” John says, smiling fondly. He’s still not entirely sure whether Sherlock really doesn’t notice these things, or whether there’s some part of him that registers it’s bad form to mention a woman’s aesthetic beauty after she’s flirted with only him.  
  
“She was an assistant to the man in Germany who’s done the most recent work on superacids,” he says. “That’s far more interesting than her bra size, I should think.”  
  
“To you,” John says, but he laughs at Sherlock’s pointed look. They are exclusive. It doesn’t stop John looking, really, because he’s not sure anything could, but Sherlock knows – and John knows Sherlock knows – he would never do anything about it. As for Sherlock, well, John knows he has been attracted to others, both before and after they began their affair, but it took him two bloody years just to get up the nerve or tolerance to handle having sex with John. He’s confident in Sherlock’s fidelity.  
  
Sherlock says, “She’s rather too smart to be helping out in the morgue.”  
  
“Maybe she just likes the city, then?”  
  
“Hm.”   
  
They go home and settle in for a bit telly. John watches some new stupid show while Sherlock pokes around on the Internet, trying to tease a mystery out of the obituary column or, his latest fun, out of the craigslist ads. It’s comfortable and absolutely usual. John eventually falls asleep with his head on Sherlock’s shoulder, and he’s aware – even if Sherlock would never admit it – that Sherlock doesn’t move so as not to wake him.  
  
“You staying up?” he asks after he stirs.  
  
Sherlock nods, so John kisses him and goes up to bed himself. He thinks fleetingly of the attractive new doctor at the hospital as he strips off his trousers, but it’s really just a fleeting thought. He’s got all the excitement he needs in his life, right here.  
  
***  
  
Molly is gone for two full weeks, and during that time, they see quite a lot of Lauren Willis. Sherlock engages her in a discussion about the new acids they’ve been forming around carbonates or some such – John knows he should know, and should probably care, but he doesn’t. Sherlock’s only testing the acids out of boredom. John doesn’t want to interfere, so he leaves Sherlock with Lauren and a half-dissolved arm and takes himself to the cinema for the afternoon. Sherlock comes home later with his eyes glinting like victory and his mouth going a hundred miles an hour about dissolution and combination and narrowly missing exploding things using water. He smells like sulfur, a bit, but John takes him to bed anyway.  
  
***  
  
In June, when they are chasing after a minor art thief, John falls and breaks his foot in three places. It’s a slightly complicated break, though not a particularly dangerous one, and it puts him on crutches for six weeks. This does not, it seems, discourage Sherlock at all from expecting him to get the shopping, nor does it discourage the surgery from calling him to fill in, but it does put an end to, well, chasing after minor art thieves and their like. Twice in the next week, Sherlock dashes out without him. The third time, he dashes out but doesn’t return immediately, and John answers a text at midnight that leads him and his crutches to an alley in Chase Cross where Sherlock is crouched over a body. There’s a bandage wrapped around his forehead.  
  
“This won’t do,” John says. He wrestles Sherlock into a cab, finally, and then home. After he’s inspected Sherlock for concussion and satisfied himself that it’s minor, then sent him to shower off the dirt and blood, John begins to wonder about finding some kind of minder. Lestrade clearly doesn’t have the manpower, and though Mycroft talks a good game, he can’t physically follow Sherlock around all the time. Almost no one can or wants to, except John, and he’s benched.  
  
He tries, anyway. The next day he follows Sherlock – who’s got a blinding headache he won’t admit to – over to Bart’s to collect further evidence off the body of the newest victim. He takes a chair outside Molly’s office this time, and settles in to wait. Sherlock looks the body up and down, gets out his magnifying glass, sniffs the man’s wrist, and takes a sample of his hair. He checks something on his phone, then asks the lab tech nearest for the man’s clothes.  
  
“I think the police took them.”  
  
“Right,” Sherlock says, and he starts for the door.  
  
John grabs his crutches and barely makes it to the doors before Sherlock does. “We’re going to Scotland Yard, then?”  
  
Sherlock glares at him. “No, I’m going to the crime scene. You’re going home.”  
  
“I’m certainly going with you,” John says. “You’ve got a head injury.”  
  
“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock says. “You can’t possibly, logically believe you can keep up with me while you’re on crutches.”  
  
“And you can’t possibly think it’s a good idea that you strike out alone,” John says. “Look, you’ve said yourself, you work best with an assistant. Let’s just – let me go with you this time, and we’ll figure out something else going forward.”  
  
Sherlock opens his mouth as if to argue, but then turns and looks at the doors. They swing open only a moment later, and Lauren Willis walks in. “You wanted the blood results on the new victim?” she says. “Hullo, John.”  
  
“Lauren,” he says, and he looks at Sherlock. Sherlock is studying her with particular attention. It makes John a little uncomfortable, but he can follow his train of thought well enough. “Ah – are you doing anything right now?”  
  
“Other than delivering samples? Not really,” she says, grinning. “What’s up, gents?”  
  
“I was about to go to a crime scene,” Sherlock says. “John feels it’s not safe for me to travel on my own –“  
  
“Not because the scene is particularly dangerous,” John says quickly, because he feels he should. “Because Sherlock sometimes takes… risks.”  
  
Sherlock’s eyes dart a quick glare at John, then turn back to Lauren. “I don’t share his assessment of my safety; however, he has been foolish enough to injure himself, leaving me without a suitable assistant for the time being. Would you possibly –“  
  
“Sure,” Lauren says. “More exciting than running lab samples all day. I’ll get my jacket and see you at the garage?”  
  
“A car,” Sherlock says after she’s gone, in the same tone he said “Interesting.” “That should please you.”  
  
John nods. “Do take care, though, all right?”  
  
“Of course.” Sherlock leans over and kisses John at the very edge of his mouth, an off-center kiss, but more than he usually gets in public. “I’ll update you as things happen.”  
  
“I’ll expect it.”  
  
He does, that time, get a half-dozen texts from Sherlock letting him know what he’s found and asking him to look a few things up on the computer.   _She’s fine, you know. No danger. You’re not missing anything_ , is the last one he gets, a half-hour before a cab drops Sherlock at the doorstep. John is glad to see him, and glad to know he’s picked up on part of John’s worry from so far away. There is a small, old-fashioned part of him that worried at sending a woman running after Sherlock.  
  
“You really shouldn’t worry,” Sherlock says, stretching out beside him in their bed. “She’s had boxing training, runs a four-minute mile, did a triathlon last year.”  
  
“Whatever for?” John asks.  
  
Sherlock shudders. “Fun.”  
  
John snickers. “Well, all right. Will she do for a bit, then?”  
  
“Just a bit,” Sherlock agrees. He rolls over on top of John, his legs carefully intertwining in a way that doesn’t put any pressure on John’s foot. John settles his hands on Sherlock’s lower back. “Really, it was very foolish of you to break your foot.”  
  
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he says, tilting up for a kiss. “Extremely foolish to be stuck laying around for so long. This bed is rather less fun without you pacing around it.”  
  
Sherlock grins. It is the slow, genuine smile that only John ever sees, one that hardly ever appears outside of their flat or even their bed. It is a smile that means he is glad John understands what he is really saying.  _I miss you out there_.  
  
They have careful, quiet sex that afternoon, even though Sherlock is in the middle of a case and John’s foot has been sending throbs of pain up his leg. This – the softer kind of sex, what John would have called “making love” when he’d been with others – happens from time to time. John thought he’d miss having quiet moments, when he and Sherlock first got together, but he’d been quickly surprised to realize that Sherlock wants peace sometimes. He will never be a habitual cuddler or a particularly tender man, but he does really need some gentleness in his life. John isn’t the world’s greatest supplier of that, always, either; he’s used to being a hard sounding board and a physically involved lover. He can slow down sometimes, though, for Sherlock, and that Sherlock can do the same for him means something beyond whatever he used to get from holding a girl’s hand or snuggling close in the mornings. They do things for each other that only they would do, that only they understand. It is more than enough.

  
***

 

John’s foot continues its slow healing, which he doesn’t help at all by working at the clinic nearly every day. Flu season hits London particularly hard, and even the doctors are dropping like diseased flies. He tries to stay as much off the foot as possible, but within a week, he manages to re-injure himself tripping over a woman’s foot in the waiting room. The resulting fall and twist will, his colleagues inform him, probably keep him on crutches for another three or four weeks – “and you shouldn’t be up for any more than fifteen minutes at a time, John, and certainly not with any weight on your foot.”  
  
He makes it home that night and calls the nearest Chinese for takeaway, then asks Mrs. Hudson to please bring it up when they ring. Sherlock is out. There is no note, and John doesn’t see anything on his phone, so he texts him. After ten minutes, he has a brief reply:  
  
 _Running. Have L with me; all’s well. – SH_  
  
It shouldn’t bother him, John thinks, but it does, just slightly. The more he’s seen of Lauren, the more he is convinced that her flirting isn’t, like Molly’s, going over Sherlock’s head. In fact, he’s rather certain Sherlock is flattered by it, perhaps even enjoying it.  
  
But it doesn’t matter, he tells himself, opening a beer. Sherlock is his. They live together – they’ve made something of a life together, in fact. They’re partners. Sherlock loves him, in the best way he is able to. This flirtation doesn’t matter. Sherlock is logical to a fault, and if he’s not always scrupulously honest or even particularly self-aware, he’s smart enough to realize how valuable John is to him. It makes no reasonable sense to cheat. John thinks of all the poor blokes out there who have to really worry about these things – who must wonder whether their partners’ emotions will overcome their partners’ logic and reason – and is glad, for once, to be removed from the ranks of the romantics. Give him reason and calculation. Give him Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock brings Lauren back to the flat that evening. John has ordered enough food in case Sherlock is eating, but he isn’t; he passes the container off to Lauren, and she sits on the floor to eat it out of the carton, bare legs crossed, looking up at Sherlock as he paces. She has a smudge of dirt by her chin that John isn’t going to tell her about, and her hair is mussed, her cheeks flushed. All the signs of a good chase, John thinks, and surprises himself by thinking they are also the signs of a good shag. He looks at Sherlock sharply, but he can’t detect anything different in his manner. He is impeccably dressed, as always, and he smirked indulgently when John said he ordered from his favorite place.  
  
John offers them both tea, ignores Sherlock’s “No,” and brings them all cups. He lets his hand linger on Sherlock’s as he passes the cup over, and Sherlock smiles just briefly. “What do you think?” he asks.  
  
For a few moments, it is like always, like Lauren isn’t even in the room. John settles onto the couch and lets Sherlock bounce some ideas off him; he filters out the non-sense, the parts where Sherlock has to mutter to himself about his own brilliance and everyone else’s ignorance. He feeds back the questions he is really thinking, and Sherlock uses them to catapult into better, clearer thoughts.  
  
Lauren chimes in here and there, but Sherlock largely ignores her. John almost feels bad for her. She doesn’t quite understand the rhythm of Sherlock’s thinking yet – and, John thinks, carefully rolling his ankle around, she probably never will.  
  
When she leaves, Sherlock sits on the other end of the couch to study his case file. “You’re jealous,” he says.  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Hm.”  
  
He flips through the file, and John watches. It takes another two minutes of silence before he says, “Should I be?”  
  
“I don’t see why.”  
  
“Then I’m not.”  
  
Sherlock turns and looks at him. “Really?”  
  
“No, but I’m trying.”  
  
He nods, and there’s a faint upward tilt at the edge of his mouth. “I’m going to stay up tonight.”  
  
“Figured as much.” John hoists himself from the couch and doesn’t even pause to kiss Sherlock good night. He doesn’t need to, he tells himself.  
  
Sherlock is a difficult man to learn, a challenging man to love, and a nearly impossible man to follow. He gets into bed and lets himself relax into the knowledge that he is the only person who has ever really tried, and he reminds himself that the reward for this is Sherlock himself, who will come to his bed that night or the next, or whenever his work is done.  
  
The case is done two nights later, and Sherlock does come to bed with him. They stay there for nearly twenty hours, with breaks only for food and tea and the bathroom. Then John has to go back to the surgery, and Sherlock decides to make a trip to Scotland Yard, and things go pretty quickly back to normal.  
  
***  
  
A month later, John is finally out of his cast, though still fighting the flu every day at work. He so far hasn’t contracted it himself, but it seems only a matter of time. He’s taken every precaution, though, including making certain he has a solid eight hours of sleep each night. When the cast comes off and he is cleared to walk again, he realizes that is going to be very difficult – he’ll soon be back on the streets with Sherlock again.  
  
“Well, you don’t have to,” Sherlock says. John isn’t sure if he is imagining the slight bit of hurt in his eyes or not.  
  
“No, of course I do. I will,” John says. They are having a late lunch at a diner not far from the courthouse where Sherlock will testify that afternoon. He has on his best suit, which is really a spectacular thing. John has conflicting emotions about that suit: it is so perfect on Sherlock that all he wants to do is rip it off.  
  
“Only –” Sherlock says, pushing away his muffin.  
  
John nods. “Only – maybe it would be all right to wait another week or two? I should do a little therapy on the foot, anyway, and – we’ve been so swamped at the surgery.”  
  
Sherlock shrugs. “It’s fine, John,” he says. “Lauren’s fellowship is nearly over, anyway. She’ll have time, if I ask.”  
  
“Are you all right with that?”  
  
“It’s not the same,” Sherlock says, “but I’m fine. Better than taking the skull along, or listening to you complain about having the flu.”  
  
John is glad they settle it so easily.  
  
***  
  
Really, John reflects a month later, it ends up offering him the best of all worlds. Lauren’s fellowship ends and she takes up a permanent position at Bart’s overseeing some of her own graduate students. On the days and nights that John is available to go with Sherlock to a crime scene, he does; when he can’t go, or doesn’t want to, Lauren fills in. Sometimes, she comes over and they all have dinner together and discuss the case. It’s not so bad, having a third voice around.  
  
She’s a hard woman to pin down, John thinks. One evening, he’s sitting in Molly’s empty office, typing a new entry for his blog, when Lauren comes by and leans against the doorframe. “God, he’s in a mood,” she says, crossing her arms.  
  
It’s the first time John’s ever really heard her say anything negative about Sherlock, and it surprises him. “It happens,” he says after a moment. He’s used to commiserating with Lestrade about Sherlock, sometimes even Donovan or Molly, but he doesn’t usually join in when strangers are having a go. Lauren isn’t a stranger, though; it’s likely she needs to blow off a bit of steam after having been out with Sherlock all day.  
  
She recrosses her arms and John congratulates himself on exactly how unjealous a man he is, that he lets his lover spend his days and sometimes nights with a woman whose breasts are this luscious and constantly on display. “Do you get used to it?” she asks.  
  
John laughs. “No,” he says. “But you learn what he means. Most of the time, he doesn’t mean anything.”  
  
“Really? Because sometimes, I feel like he does mean something, and I just can’t get it, and he doesn’t even expect me to get it. That’s the worst, isn’t it? That he just – he’s just so much smarter that he doesn’t even try to explain, he just assumes I won’t know.”  
  
John knows. Of course he knows. He’d need every hand in the morgue plus a few who aren’t dead yet to count the number of times Sherlock has insulted his intelligence indirectly by assuming John is too stupid to catch on or catch up. “Some of that’s just habit,” John says. “He’s been the brightest man in the room his whole life.”  
  
Lauren snorts indelicately. “Except for that whack-job brother of his, right?”  
  
“Mycroft? You’ve met Mycroft?”  
  
She frowns. “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”  
  
“Nah, don’t worry about the cloak and dagger stuff,” John says. “Mycroft has a flair for the dramatic. They both do. Always have.” He leans onto those last words, wanting to remind her, remind himself, that he's been here longest.  
  
Lauren grins widely, something a little nasty in her look. “Must make for a great time in bed,” she says.  
  
“With Mycroft I’d have no idea,” John deadpans, and she laughs.  
  
“I knew it,” she says, “I knew he must be wild.”  
  
“Wild what?” Sherlock says, sweeping into the office past Lauren. “John, really, I texted you four minutes ago. Can we please leave, I’m not going to get anything done until I’ve been to Montrose’s study again.”  
  
“Again?” John asks. “Sherlock, it’s nearly ten, and you’ve been there twice tonight already. What could possibly –“  
  
“Evidence doesn’t sleep,” he says. “Even if you somehow insist you must.”  
  
“It’s fine,” Lauren says, though she sounds a little weary to John. “I’ll go. We can share a cab to Baker Street and then on, all right?”  
  
“Yeah, fine,” John says, and he’s grateful that she’s willing to do this, even if it is exhausting.  
  
As he gets into bed that night, alone, he reminds himself that Lauren’s willingness to help out makes it possible, finally, for John to keep not only somewhat regular hours, but also for him to bring in a steady paycheck. For the first time since he’s moved to London, he is comfortable financially, socially, and physically. This is thanks to her. He should really stop worrying, he decides.  
  
Besides, somehow not being together all day, every day has produced a subtle but lovely change in his relationship with Sherlock. He suddenly turns up at the surgery sometimes, just to take John to dinner or, once, to bring him a packet of crisps and a hot cup of coffee. At home, he sleeps nearly every night in John’s bed, and John wakes twice to find a long arm curled around his waist. Sherlock doesn’t start doing the shopping or making him breakfast or anything miraculous, but John sees these as clear signs that theirs is a partnership that can thrive even without getting shot at together every single day. Sherlock genuinely enjoys his company.  
  
It is brilliant.  
  
Which is why he should know it won’t last.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In finding Sherlock a new assistant, John gets more than he bargained for.

Late on a Friday night, they are chasing down a man who murdered his wife. Only, Sherlock insists, he really hasn’t killed her; the whole thing is a set up. Sherlock is telling him this in gasping breaths as they round yet another corner. The man has a bicycle, which is the worst possible form of transportation to have to chase. Bikes could go anywhere, and they could go fast. John has just about given the whole thing up when they whip into an alleyway and Sherlock collides with the cyclist himself. The abrupt stop throws Sherlock to the ground and the non-murdering husband up over his handlebars and right on top of Sherlock. John hauls him off and pins him to the nearest wall, twisting one arm behind his back. Sherlock slowly draws himself to his hands and knees, coughing viciously.  
  
“All right?” John asks.  
  
“Fine,” he wheezes, and John is already guessing he has broken ribs.  
  
The police aren’t too far behind them, and the husband proves a nearly unworthy nemesis. He stands still, doesn’t try to escape, and bursts into tears when Lestrade’s men apply handcuffs. John lets him go and then helps Sherlock over to the ambulance.  
  
“All right?” Lestrade calls.  
  
“Make sure – you get – the bike,” Sherlock pants. “Evidence.”  
  
“This is boring,” John says, and Sherlock laughs, then groans a bit. “He could’ve tried a little harder, don’t you think?”  
  
“He’s an amateur.”  
  
“So am I,” John says, directing Sherlock to climb into the ambulance. “But every once in a while, it’d be nice to have a bit of a challenge.”  
  
Sherlock shakes his head. “I’d no idea you were bored, John.”  
  
“Well, not all of us set off fireworks to announce it,” he says, and gently pushes Sherlock to sit on the stretcher.  
  
John brushes off the help of a few familiar medics and turns to treat Sherlock himself. He is trying to explain the whole case, but he stops when John lays his hands on his chest. “Broken?” he asks.  
  
“Possibly,” Sherlock says. “I suppose I should submit to an X-ray.”  
  
“I don’t know that’ll help you much,” John says. “Let’s have a look, though.” Sherlock nods, then winces. “Did you hit your head?”  
  
“No,” he says. “I think I’m fine. We should just –“  
  
“Come on, longer we’re in here, longer you can delay doing paperwork,” John says. “Shirt off.”  
  
Sherlock complies, but slowly. John rifles through a kit on the floor of the ambulance, looking for a bit of antibacterial cream. There is a cut on Sherlock’s scalp that will need stitches, he realizes, and tells Sherlock so.  
  
“Then let’s just go to A&E and get this done with,” Sherlock says.  
  
John sighs. “Why are you being difficult? No, scratch that – why are you being reasonable about this? You never want to go there. I’m perfectly capable of doing a quick job of this.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have to,” Sherlock says.  
  
There is something quiet, almost tender, in his voice, and John pauses. He looks again at the scrape on Sherlock’s head. Has he hit it in the alley? It doesn’t seem like it, but – what else explains this?  
  
“I want to,” John says. “Now turn so I can see.”  
  
Sherlock does, his shirt hanging from his shoulders. His chest has a long mark across the front, about the shape of the bike’s handlebars, and John knows it will bruise a brilliant purple-black against Sherlock’s skin. There isn’t much blood, at least, and hardly any scrapes. Most of the damage seems to come from that one impact. John slides his hand over Sherlock’s ribs, palpitating lightly until Sherlock takes a sharp, uncomfortable breath. “Cracked, I think,” John says, probing carefully. “How’s your breathing?”  
  
“Fine,” Sherlock murmurs. “It’s fine.”  
  
“I’ll have a listen, though.” He pulls on a stethoscope and pushes Sherlock’s shirt the rest of the way down his arms. It is then that he sees it, the thing that explains everything, Sherlock’s tenderness and his strange desire to go to the hospital. On his collarbone, just far enough toward the shoulder that it will never be visible with his shirt on, there is a livid bite mark. A love bite. John didn’t deliver it; he almost never marks Sherlock. Yet there it is – not a bruise from the bicycle, not a scrape from their last chase, but a plainly obvious sign that someone else’s mouth has recently been on Sherlock’s skin.  
  
Sherlock looks away as John places the stethoscope over his heart. “Breathe in,” he says, speaking to them both. Sherlock does, and he holds it until John tells him to exhale. He repeats the motion four times, listening intently to Sherlock’s pulse and lungs. No signs of a leak; pulse steady, if slightly elevated. He’ll be fine.  
  
“John,” Sherlock says.  
  
“I’ll do the stitches now,” John says, moving to the side. He can hear the unusual flatness of his own voice, and knows Sherlock can, too. “Best take that shirt all the way off if you don’t want any more blood on it.”  
  
Sherlock complies. His hands seem steady; John’s certainly are. He doesn’t pause at all as he draws a syringe from the nearest medical cabinet.  
  
“You’ll want to talk about this,” Sherlock says.  
  
“Not really,” John says. “I think I can figure most of this without discussion. That’s from Lauren, of course.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
John nods. He fills his syringe from a small glass vial. “You’re sure you didn’t hit your head?”  
  
“No,” Sherlock says. “I’m fine.”  
  
“Good,” John says. He puts his hand over Sherlock’s, turns his arm over by gripping his wrist, then sinks the needle right into Sherlock’s bent arm and pushes the plunger. Sherlock doesn’t even flinch; he just looks at John, his eyes widening only slightly. John pulls the needle out and tapes a cotton ball over the puncture. “How long, then?”  
  
“John.”  
  
“Three months, I think.” The day he’d first arrived at the surgery and whisked John off for dinner at Angelo’s had been only shortly after a night when Sherlock hadn’t come home. It wasn’t that unusual; he often stayed out all night. John hadn’t even worried, because he had eight text messages explaining Sherlock’s whereabouts the whole time. It was the dinner that should have worried him, he realizes. It wasn’t Sherlock missing him; it was Sherlock apologizing.  
  
Sherlock nods. He blinks once, then again, more slowly.  
  
"I should have known," John says. This is so very, very true. She met Mycroft. She was there, all the time. He sent them off on cases together. It was practically an endorsement.  
  
“I understand I’ve hurt you,” Sherlock says.  
  
“You should put that shirt back on,” John says. “They’ll fix you up at A&E. You’ll sleep for a bit.”  
  
“What did you give me?”  
  
“Lorazepam,” John says. He puts the used needle carefully into the syringe disposal box and pockets the empty vial.  
  
Sherlock fumbles with shrugging back into his shirt. John watches him try to button it for a moment, then he leans in and does it himself, briskly. When his finger brushes Sherlock’s skin, Sherlock says, softly, “I –“  
  
“Don’t,” John says. All that Sherlock can say now would be meaningless. Excuses. “You’ve been fucking her for three months. Have you used protection, at least?”  
  
“Yes, of course.”  
  
John nods. The final button is done up. He leaves his hands there, close together, just under Sherlock’s chin. “When was the last time?”  
  
“This afternoon.”  
  
John draws his hands back. He feels a wave of nausea. "Today?"  
  
"I told you I was picking up samples," Sherlock says. His voice is strange, too low. "You believed me."  
  
"Of course I believed you," John says. "It's what I do. I've trusted you further than I ever should have."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"But I won’t do this.”  
  
“I know,” Sherlock says. His words are thick. “But I – enjoy her.”  
  
“Then you understand we’re through.”  
  
Sherlock nods. His head is already heavy, John can tell. He puts his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders, and Sherlock looks at him. His eye are dark, his expression almost one of surprise. John cups his cheek for a moment, wondering if he'll say something more. He wonders if there's anything to be said. If Sherlock told him, right now, if he chose him -- but no. That won't happen. He draws his hand away. Sherlock closes his eyes. “Lie down,” John says. “I’ll tell Lestrade what’s happened.”  
  
He helps him sit back against the stretcher and makes sure he is secure there, then waves over a medic. “Sorry,” he says, “think he’ll need transport. Stitches and a possible broken rib – I was trying to get him to sit still, and I may have hit him with a bit much Ativan.”  
  
The medic, who’s seen them before, just nods. “Don’t blame you, mate,” he says. “He’s a tough one.”  
  
“Right,” John says. He climbs out of the ambulance and briefly tells Lestrade the same story.  
  
“All right,” Lestrade says. “Well, have him come ‘round in the morning, then, will you? I’ve still got to figure out where the wife is.”  
  
“He’ll be up to talking later tonight,” John says. “But I won’t be around to remind him tomorrow, sorry. You’ll have to stop in or call him yourself.”  
  
Lestrade raises an eyebrow. “I’m off,” John says, and waves, then walks two streets away to catch a taxi.  
  
He figures he has two good hours before the sedative wears off completely and Sherlock comes to some kind of sense. There will exist several possibilities at that point: he might decide to chase after John; he might decide to come home and stew; or he might decide to ignore the whole thing. No matter what, John knows he can’t see Sherlock that night again and trust himself not to do something much more damaging than hit the man with more medication.  
  
So he goes back to Baker Street, packs two suitcases full of clothes and three boxes with books, puts his computer and mobile and various chargers into a backpack, and bundles the tea things, the kettle, and a new loaf of bread into a bag, then calls a taxi. While he waits, he writes a note to Mrs. Hudson letting her know he’ll be in touch and that he’ll cover his half of the next month’s rent if Sherlock won’t, and he leaves it under her door.  
  
When the cab comes, he gives the man an extra 10 pounds to help with the boxes, then directs him to a tourist-rich hotel downtown. From there, he pays another cabbie to take him to a different motel, this one equally commercial, and he checks in there under his sister’s married name – Harry Baxter – and lugs the boxes in on a luggage cart. It isn’t enough to keep Sherlock from finding him, not by a long shot, but it is enough to let Sherlock know he doesn’t want to be found.  
  
And he doesn’t. When he sits on the hard motel bed, he allows himself, finally, to sink out of action mode and back into feeling. Sherlock has been cheating on him. With Lauren. Just under his nose. Everything he’s based their relationship on – the idea that the difficulties were worth it, because Sherlock is brilliant and  _only John gets him_  – that’s all crap. He closes his eyes and thinks of his and Sherlock’s first kiss, the tentative, almost grateful look Sherlock gave him when he cupped the man’s neck and drew him down. He thinks of lying in bed with him of a Sunday morning, listening to him read the newspaper aloud and offer commentary on how everyone had everything wrong, John’s hand high on his long, naked thigh. He thinks of Lauren’s hands on Sherlock’s slim waist, Lauren’s mouth on his neck, Sherlock’s head thrown back in the kind of ecstasy that is supposed to be John’s only to provide, and he shudders and feels ill.  
  
It doesn’t seem possible, but it is. They are through. He had hardly believed himself when he said the words in the ambulance, but now it sings through him. Things are over. They will have to change.  
  
This will be terrible.  
  
***  
  
He doesn’t hear from Sherlock. Perhaps this is meant as a kindness; perhaps it is meant as caution. John spends the time trying to find a flat. It occupies hours and hours of his time and forces him to leave the hotel and meet strangers again and again. It’s exhausting, and that combined with a bottle of whisky he picks up the first day puts him into deep, untroubled sleep both nights.  
  
Once he’s found an acceptable place – a studio that’s almost convenient to the surgery – he calls his sister and arranges to stay with her until the place opens at the first of the next month. He calls a host of other places, too, moves his mobile bill into his own name, takes himself off the water and heating bills at Sherlock’s place, switches their internet service into Sherlock’s name alone, and puts a forwarding request in at the post office.  
  
This is the easy stuff. He’s done this before. It’s practical and it all requires time and John is grateful for the details and tiresome requirements. He’s not like Sherlock; he can totally lose himself in simple tasks, so he does.  
  
But then it’s Thursday and he’s lying on Harry’s couch with a glass of too-cold chardonnay, and he’s thinking of the way that, not long ago, they’d been talking about sometime traveling to Italy. Sherlock had said, “Perhaps after the new year,” because there was an exhibit in Rome he’d wanted to see. Had he known, even then, that they’d never get there? Had he realized? He was a brilliant man. Horrible at social situations, true, but still very smart, smart enough to know what this would mean.  
  
“He’s a prat,” Harry says. “It’s worse because you love him, but he’s still a man.”  
  
“Stick to women, is your advice?”  
  
“Always,” she says, sipping her glass slowly.  
  
“Worked for him, I guess,” John says, and finishes his drink too quickly.  
  
He goes back to work the next day. There’s something wonderfully mathematical about medicine, sometimes. People tell their stories differently, but there are certain words he can latch on to, certain signs that say he’s facing a case of bronchitis or a hernia or just a seasonal allergy. He asks a woman with a clearly sprained wrist to tell him the level of her pain, on a scale of one to ten, and as she says, “Five,” he wonders where he should place himself. Seven, he thinks, and then an hour later, when a man comes in with a broken foot, he decides it’s closer to eight.  
  
When he leaves the office and Sherlock is standing outside, leaned against a parking meter, tapping on his phone, it’s a ten. It’s a ten. It’s an unremitting ten. Sherlock looks up and frowns, and John staggers backward. Ten. Ten. Ten. The pain hits with the same rhythm as his heartbeat. Christ, he still wants him. He wants all of him.  
  
“Coffee?” Sherlock says.  
  
“No,” John says. He turns to the right, away from Sherlock and their usual walk home and starts plowing through people. He hears Sherlock catch him up; his steps stay a few paces back.  
  
“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock says when John has to pause at the next corner to wait for traffic. “Sit down and have a coffee with me. You’ll do your foot an injury.”  
  
John is shaking. Sherlock is close enough he can smell him -- his expensive aftershave, his cheap shampoo, the vaguely leather scent that his hands pick up from the case of his phone and the shoe polish he insists on using. He  _hates_  him. He turns and does what he should have done at the crime scene; he shoves Sherlock, pulls a fist up to hit him.  
  
“Don’t,” Sherlock says, holding up both hands. “You’ll only feel bad about it.”  
  
“I don’t think I will,” John says. “Though you might.”  
  
Sherlock sighs. “I don’t doubt at all your ability to break my nose, John. I don’t even doubt your right. Can you please put your fist down? Thank you.”  
  
“What are you doing here?” John says, hands at his sides.  
  
“I am here to talk,” Sherlock says. “I believe it’s rather an expected part of this whole process.”  
  
“This process?” The street is clear for them to cross, now, but John decides to stand his ground. “This is called breaking up, Sherlock. We’re not together anymore, because you’re  _enjoying_  someone else.”  
  
“Yes, that,” Sherlock says. “This truly seems a discussion we should have not out on the street.”  
  
John shrugged. “Bollocks to that. You gave up that kind of time with me the minute you put your dick –“  
  
“Let’s do consider there are children around,” Sherlock says, and it’s so absolutely  _not on_  that John stops.  
  
“Fine,” he says. “Fine bloody fine. Coffee. You have thirty minutes.”  
  
“Guaranteed?”  
  
“No. That place,” he says, pointing to a little café four storefronts down. He’s never been there, but he doesn’t want to walk anywhere too far. Sherlock will use the entire time to… do whatever it is he thinks he’s doing.  
  
They start off, and Sherlock taps on his phone as they walk. It’s so fucking galling not to have his complete concentration, even now, that John reaches out, takes the phone, and throws it into the street. There’s a satisfying crunch only a moment later, which he hears clearly through the silence of Sherlock’s surprise.  
  
“That was uncalled for,” Sherlock says after a moment, catching up to him.  
  
“Was it?”  
  
“I was only texting Lestrade,” he says. “Not Lauren.”  
  
“Well, that is comforting,” John says.  
  
“I’d no idea you’d be this vindictive.”  
  
John holds open the café door. “Twenty-five minutes.”  
  
Sherlock goes to the counter and orders them both drinks, and John takes a seat at a table near the window. His foot aches a little today, and he tries to think about that.  
  
“Here,” Sherlock says, and presents a piece of strawberry pie.  
  
“What is this?”  
  
“You’re hungry. It often makes your mood much – worse.”  
  
John rubs his forehead. “My mood is terrible because of you, Sherlock. My mood and right now, many, many things in my life are terrible because of you. Pie won’t solve anything.”  
  
“Still, it is your favorite.” John pushes it away. “Really, there’s no sense in not eating the pie. It’s paid for.”  
  
“I’m not hungry.”  
  
“You haven’t eaten since lunch, and you had rather too little of that,” Sherlock says.  
  
“Honest to god, if you make me eat that pie, or talk about it any more, I’m going to be sick,” John says. Sherlock is right – he was hungry, his lunch was too small, all of that, but now just sitting across from Sherlock is making something whirl nervously in his chest and stomach. He barely trusts himself to speak. Swallowing, eating, all of that – it seems like too much risk.  
  
“Fine,” Sherlock says. He rests both hands on the table, folds the fingers together. “You have questions.”  
  
John gasps. “That’s why you’re here? You think I have questions?”  
  
“I would, in your situation.”  
  
“You would never be in my situation,” John says, “because I never would have cheated on you.”  
  
“Why is that?” Sherlock asks. “You clearly still find women and some men attractive.”  
  
“I have some self-control,” John says. “Besides, I live with a human lie-detector. I couldn’t’ve done it without you knowing, could I?”  
  
“Why would that have mattered?”  
  
John smiles his thinnest, meanest smile. “It would have hurt,” he says. “You may not think so, but it would have. Think about this: lying next to me, knowing someone else had been doing the same thing, touching the same places, seeing the same scars. Hearing the same gasps. What would it have done to you? To know that I’d been calling out someone else’s name? To know I thought someone else was just as clever, just as brilliant.”  
  
Sherlock clears his throat. His hands have unlaced, and he adjusts his collar. “It would not be pleasant,” he says, after a moment.  
  
“Right.” John leans forward. “The only thing I have to say to you is this: Your being faithful was all I had some days, Sherlock. The knowledge that it was you and I against everything and everyone – it kept me with you. You never think of others; you stay out nights, run off without me, you don’t clean up or help at home, you never ask about my day and don’t care about it if I tell you, you won’t go to the cinema. You think fun is me watching you experiment on dead people. You belittle my hobbies. You mock my family. Your family consists of a great spying stalker of a brother and a mother you’ve never deemed me fit to meet. You’re thoughtlessly cruel sometimes, and the rest of the time, you’re annoying and temperamental.”  
  
“Goodness, why stay at all?” Sherlock said, staring at the table.  
  
“Because I love you, you prat. I do, and it’s absolutely sick, I should have had my head examined years ago. You’re brilliant, you’re fascinating, and you’re dangerous.” John leaned back. “Guess I’ve got what’s been coming to me. I’ve thought that you cared for years. You didn’t say, but you acted like – you never – and I took it as a sign that all of this, how hard I’ve worked to understand, to be with you, to mold my expectations to what you’re able to provide – I thought that meant something to you.”  
  
When Sherlock looks up, his eyes are red. “It has, John. Meant something.”  
  
John shakes his head. Sherlock is too good at faking emotions. “You’re a liar,” he mutters. “And it's too late for that."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because you had a choice. Three or four months ago, you had a choice, and you made it, and now this is where we are. I trusted you and believed you, believed in you, and you repaid that with nothing. No loyalty. That was all I had, Sherlock. It was all I ever had from you."  
  
"John, I'm -- I am sorry."  
  
"Doesn't matter," John says. "I’m through with this. Don’t call me, don’t stalk me, don’t send your brother after me. I need time and a great deal of space, and even after all of that, we aren’t going to be friends again.”  
  
Sherlock clears his throat. “That won’t be a problem. I’m leaving for France in the morning.”  
  
“For good?” John says, actually hoping. The ocean would be enough of a boundary, probably. The ocean and the cost of the various boats and aeroplanes and John’s aversion to learning any new languages.  
  
“Indefinitely,” Sherlock says. “I’ve been brought in by the government.” He dries his eyes on his cuff.  
  
“Is Lauren going with you? No,” John says, “don’t tell me. I won’t believe you, anyway.”  
  
Sherlock looks right at him. “She is not.”  
  
John shrugs, then pushes the coffee away and stands. He realizes the people at the next table are very purposefully not looking at him. Did he raise his voice? He can’t remember; he can’t care.  
  
Sherlock follows him outside. He is silent. John turns and sees, again, an expression that should be heart-rending, but is likely just faked. Then again, why would he fake it? He’s done nothing so far to spare John’s feelings.  
  
“Shake hands, can we?” Sherlock asks. “I would like – I accept everything you’ve said, of course. But I would like, if this is farewell, I think we should shake hands. No matter what I’ve done, you’ve been – John, the last five years have been –“  
  
“All right,” John says. He takes the hand Sherlock has extended and tries not to flinch at the warmth, the familiarity, the want. Sherlock’s grip is steady and firm; his palm is damp, which is unusual. He looks John in the eye and then, surprisingly, looks away first.  
  
“Good-bye, John,” he says.  
  
“Good-bye, Sherlock.” His hand is released, and Sherlock turns and walks away without a backward glance. He is around the corner before John remembers to move.  
  
***  
  
His new flat is very, very spare. It suits John just fine. He’s got a bed, a desk, a reading chair, a dresser, and a small kitchen. The bathroom is almost a closet. The floors are made of cheap, fake wood and the walls are bluish white and heavy with paint. It takes him forty-nine minutes to clean the entire thing to a brisk, bleached shine that is so far removed from Baker Street it makes him smile.  
  
There’s laundry in the basement and he meets a woman there his first week in the building. Her name is Peg and she’s got two boys, one who’s in the war. She’s a little plump for his taste but she has a quick smile and doesn’t mind a bit of silence. They talk about her son over a casual takeaway dinner at her place a month after John’s moved in.  
  
“I should tell you,” he says, when the food is away and they’re both sitting on the couch. “I’ve only just got out of a very – a very serious –“  
  
“Oh, I guessed,” she says, smiling from the other end of the couch. “I’ve a rather complicated relationship with the boys’ father, myself. Wouldn’t be so bad to have someone to watch telly with now and then, though.”  
  
“Yeah,” John says. He figures he might be good for that at this point. He might only be good for that.  
  
He works, he eats, he sleeps. He spends one evening a week with Peg, one evening every other week with his sister. He is bored out of his mind. He reads the newspaper front to back every day, looking for some mention of crime in France that might signal where Sherlock is or what he’s doing. He never gets around to changing his mobile number, just in case.[  
](http://thingsbaker.livejournal.com/2772.html)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In finding Sherlock a new assistant, John gets more than he bargained for. Originally published on Livejournal in 2011.

After a month, he gets a call one evening from D.I. Lestrade. “Look, I know this is a bit weird, but – we’re going for a beer, and you ought to join us.”  
  
“Who’s us?” John says, feeling wary. Is Sherlock back from his travels? He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of the police since his last time out with Sherlock. He never did find out what Sherlock told them.  
  
“The usual crew. Not Sherlock, god, he’s still in France or something, isn’t he? Anyway, just come out. We’ve been talking, and it would be good to see you.”  
  
John hesitates only for a moment. He has no better offers and nothing else on. There’s supposed to be a match on tonight, anyway; he might as well watch it at a pub. “All right,” he agrees, and thirty minutes later he’s at a table with the whole crew. Donovan’s there, chatting up some new bloke on the squad, and there’s also the two interchangeable guys who always blocked the scenes off early. No sign of Anderson. Lestrade’s across from John and he tilts his head in greeting. “It’s good to see you,” he says, and John almost thinks he’s telling the truth.  
  
John signals the waitress and orders a pint. “I have to tell you right off, if you’re here to find Sherlock, I’ve got no idea where he is.”  
  
“Oh, I know that,” Lestrade says. “And good on you for it.”  
  
“That woman was off,” Donovan says, catching John by surprise. “Lori or whatever? Never did like her.”  
  
“You never did like me, either,” John says, and she grins.  
  
“A little, I did.” She clinks her pint against his. “Anyway, cheers, doctor. Looks like you found a life after all.”  
  
It’s so inaccurate that it sets John’s teeth on edge. What he has now isn’t a life – it’s still the broken pieces of what had felt like a life. He’s got work sometimes, at least, but his life is nothing like it used to be. He looks at his hands until Donovan turns back to her new friend.  
  
“I thought,” says Lestrade, sliding a slim black notebook across the table, “that you might be bored.”  
  
John looks down at the thing. It’s not a notebook after all – it’s some kind of information packet. A brochure, perhaps, but a thick one. “What’s this?”  
  
“You read medicine at uni, right? Not quite what we’re looking for, but it’s close. There’s an opening for a forensics man. Terrible hours, not great pay, lots of time mucking about in the country cleaning up old bones.” Lestrade meets his eyes. “You’d be good at it.”  
  
“Me? I’m not a detective,” John says. “I’m not a scientist.”  
  
“No, but you’re level-headed and quick, and you don’t flinch at the sight of blood. Beyond that, I don’t think your live patients can provide quite the challenge that these can.” He smiles. “Think about it.”  
  
“I can’t – “ John sighs. When Sherlock comes back, it will be a problem. He can’t sit there and watch him and not care. Really, though, it’s a little tempting. He’s begun to think things are getting better because, although he still misses Sherlock every day, he sometimes misses the action more.  
  
But when he thinks about this -- about the training it would take, about the regular hours, the regular pay, the regular colleagues -- his mind resists. There is a small, regrettable voice in the back of his head telling him that taking such a regular job would only get in the way, once Sherlock is back, once they are together again.  
  
“I’ll think about it,” he finally says, and Lestrade smiles again.  
  
“While you’re thinking about it,” he says, “you should show your face sometimes. We’re always here on Thursdays.”  
  
“All right,” John agrees. It’s something else to do.  
  
***  
  
After six weeks, he gets a postcard. It’s stamped from Switzerland and has a sketched picture of the Alps on the back. It’s in Sherlock’s scratchy handwriting.  
  
 _You’re not now and never have been in need of a head examination.  
  
Very sincerely yours,  
  
SH_  
  
The address is correct to the letter. John throws it in the bin by the desk, then picks it out that night before he goes to bed. He locks it into the metal case where he keeps his gun; he tries not to think about either of them.  
  
***  
  
At five thirty one morning soon after, there is sharp knock on his door. It’s a Friday; John is feeling a bit muzzy from a meet-up at the pub the night before. He’s still giving Lestrade’s offer some thought, but tomorrow he's filling in for a man at the nearest surgery. He doesn't have time for this.  
  
He pulls himself out of bed and over to the door when there’s a second knock. It’s not a great building, and the women two doors down have drunken boyfriends who are often lost.  
  
The man on the other side of the door isn’t a drunken boyfriend, though. It’s Mycroft. He’s well dressed and sharp eyed and he looks entirely too tall standing in the narrow hallway under flickering blue lights.  
  
“This is a bit more dreadful than I’d expected,” Mycroft says, after John has invited him in out of stunned surprised courtesy.  
  
“Yes, thanks,” John says. “What are you doing here?”  
  
“It’s why I’m here that’s dreadful,” Mycroft says. He straightens his tie. “John, my brother has been lost.”  
  
“Lost?”  
  
“He is believed to be dead,” Mycroft says.  
  
John laughs. Mycroft has said the phrase with such disdain that there’s really no other natural reaction to it all. Then he looks at Mycroft’s face and sees it doesn’t match his words, that his mouth is pulled into a horrible twist and his eyes are nearly shut. The man’s skin is pale, his hair is damp. He looks undone – or what undone would look like on someone as buttoned-up as Mycroft.  
  
“Believed – but what –“  
  
“Fell over the Reichenbach Falls,” Mycroft says. “With Professor Moriarty. He, by the way, is dead. I’ve seen the body.”  
  
Mycroft says  _seen_  the way others say  _killed_  or  _crushed_  or  _obliterated_. John grabs the back of the nearest kitchen chair. He swallows hard. Sherlock – dead? “Do you – you said ‘believed.’ Do you really think he is?”  
  
Mycroft hesitates for a moment, then says, “I do. I believe I do.” His voice is lower and softer than John has ever heard it. “It’s been inevitable,” he says after a moment. “I always knew – and I told him –“  
  
“Bollocks what you told him,” John mutters. “You’ve been there? You’ve seen where this happened?”  
  
Mycroft nods. He raises his hand, and it takes John a moment to figure out what he means – he’s pointing to the reading chair, and John waves him into it. He doesn’t collapse, exactly, but something bends in Mycroft that John wasn’t even sure could flex. “Reichenbach Falls,” he says. “Dreadful place. The climb took me the better part of two hours. It’s very gray, very high up. Rocky. Terrible. No idea what he was thinking, going all the way up there.”  
  
“And he – what, fell?”  
  
“He was followed, of course. He must have known – he did know, he’d left for the continent to avoid the man, I took him to the airport myself – but, he’d been traveling. He stayed overnight at a small hotel, woke the next morning and made the hike with a companion.”  
  
John swallows and finally sits down himself. “Lauren?”  
  
“What? No, no,” Mycroft says. “That was over long before he left. No, a gentleman of my acquaintance whose charge was to oversee his safety.”  
  
“A bodyguard?”  
  
Mycroft hazards a thin smile. “Quite. Ineffective as such, but it’s a proper name. They made it to the top of the hill, and then Sherlock turned him back. He’d forgotten to post a letter.”  
  
It’s then that John feels the full weight of it all: the postcard. He stands and crosses to the closet, draws down the box with his gun, and takes the card out. He reads it again, then hands it to Mycroft.  
  
“Ah, yes,” he says. “I imagine that’s it. So he did know. Of course." He clears his throat and studies the head of his cane. “He was followed by Professor Moriarty himself. I assume you’ve read about the arrests?”  
  
John hasn’t. He hasn’t seen the paper yet that morning, and he doesn’t buy the Sunday Times anymore. “Ah. Forty-five separate criminals were arrested last week. All of this was the work of my brother. It had been his intention that Moriarty would have been among those arrested, I believe, but he escaped. It’s not surprising. He was rather a brilliant match for Sherlock.”  
  
The rest of the story is mundane. A struggle. A fall. Moriarty’s battered, bloated body washed up within a day; Sherlock’s hadn’t, but his coat and scarf were found in the water; his cigarette case and gloves were found at the top. “He’s left the dispensation of his property to me,” Mycroft says, finally rising. “I rather think it won’t surprise you to learn he’s left nearly everything to you.”  
  
“To me,” John says. It is surprising. “What – ah, what does that even entail?”  
  
“Very little of value,” Mycroft says. “But perhaps you might venture to Baker Street in the near future and find what you think you might desire to have.” He looks at his hands for a moment. “There will be a memorial service,” he says. “Our mother has insisted. I’ll send you the details when they are arranged.”  
  
John nods. He reaches out and clasps Mycroft’s hand, and as he does, he wonders if Sherlock had already foreseen this end when they’d last spoken. “I can’t believe it,” John says.  
  
Mycroft nods. “And yet it is true.” He leaves, and John is suddenly, shockingly, very very alone.  
  
***  
  
There’s nothing left to take from Baker Street. Mycroft failed to mention that the whole place was set on fire the night before Sherlock’s death, and what’s left is simply soggy, ashy bits of books, the couch, the few things that Sherlock still had in his room. There are beakers broken and melted into the old kitchen table. John draws his fingers over the surface anyway. They had breakfast here. He made tea there. They argued over shopping. They once stood with the refrigerator door open and kissed for ten solid minutes, and at the end, Sherlock said, “I think we should visit someplace cold soon, don’t you?” and they both laughed.  
  
The stairs are nearly impassable; John finds his way through the treacherous broken boards and into Sherlock’s room. It is destroyed. The bed looks as though someone poured kerosene on it, it is so thoroughly burnt. Sherlock’s armoire has suffered a similar fate, though inside, John finds a few pieces of clothing still more or less intact. He takes a single shirt, charcoal gray, and crumples it to his face. The tears he expects don’t come. It doesn’t smell like Sherlock, but instead like smoke and fire and gas. He lets it fall to the floor. He won’t mourn like this.  
  
He mourns, instead, in a pub. He’s had to call Lestrade himself – Mycroft apparently has deigned only to notify John – and the detective is surprisingly emotional. They meet for scotch just after lunch, and within two hours, they are drunk and have been joined by a dozen officers John barely knows. It is a quiet sort of mourning. Lestrade takes him through the most recent case, the arrests, the network, the relentless tracking. “You knew he was being followed, then?” John asks.  
  
“We didn’t,” Lestrade says. “He did, though. He told me last time he was here.”  
  
“He was here?”  
  
Lestrade nods. “Early last week. Beat up a mugger. I thought it was just a mugger, you know, but – it must have been part of the whole thing.” He sighs and sips at a new glass. “I thought he was going to see you, actually.”  
  
John shakes his head. “It’s been two months.” He tells him about the card, and Lestrade smirks.  
  
“Cryptic bastard,” he says, voice full of regret and affection. “Can’t even say good-bye in the normal fashion, can he?”  
  
But John thinks he had done, in the best way he could. He starts to wonder about everything, then; how long ago did Sherlock realize this was the only ending that was possible? When exactly had he decided it would be an even exchange to give his life to take Moriarty’s? Had he known before he’d left London? Had he known before – before he’d made John leave?  
  
He decides that last is probably ridiculous and revisionist, and yet he can’t let it go. It isn’t impossible. This is – was – Sherlock bloody Holmes he’s thinking of. Nothing is really off the table.  
  
Except, apparently, reconciliation.  
  
***  
  
Sherlock’s memorial service is held in a small, quiet church on the edge of a small, quiet village where John’s never been. He meets Sherlock’s mother for the first time when she walks up to him and wraps her thin arms around his shoulders and buries her face against him, sobs shaking them both. Mycroft pulls her away with his usual expression of distaste, but he does then keep an arm about her. John never has the chance to tell her how sorry he is.  
  
Lauren does not come. John wonders whether she was invited. He sent word to the staff at Bart’s, though, and Molly is here. She must have known.  
  
There are about a half dozen folks from the police, another half dozen that John recognizes as regular sources of Sherlock’s. There are a few relatives, all dressed in proper black and speaking a clipped, disdainful English that John recognizes almost immediately. He is dressed himself in a new black suit, black tie, and shined black shoes, none of which he can afford, and none of which he ever plans to wear again. This is it: one-time only. Widower’s weeds, he thinks, and takes a seat near the front of the church. He turns the program over in his hands and sees the small inscription that Mrs. Holmes will have put on Sherlock's headstone.  
  
 _Ecce homo, ecce signum._  
  
His Latin is a bit rusty, but he gets it by the middle of the service. Behold the man, behold the proof. John doesn’t love it. They aren’t burying Sherlock today, after all; Sherlock himself would be appalled that anyone thinks there’s sufficient proof of his death. Without a body, it’s hard to believe he’s really gone.  
  
He doesn't believe it, and he decides that this is his right. He was the closest thing Sherlock Holmes ever had to a real partner, whether Sherlock wanted to believe it or not. Whatever happened between them, as John sits there and listens to dreadful music and a cold eulogy from a chaplain who clearly never met Sherlock, he knows they weren't done. Sherlock can't just be gone, because they weren't over; things between them hadn't concluded. He can't be dead. He wouldn't want to leave things this unsolved, this unexplained.  
  
But he has. For the first month after the service, John expects him to pop up, to be just around the corner, to be leaning against the meter. He is not. He is not ever going to be. He tries to convince himself of this, but he is not successful. It's sick, he decides. He can't be unloyal even now, now that the man has gone and done the worst thing he could: hurt John and left him completely alone.  
  
One day, when he is off from work and idly reading a translated version of  _Blick_  online, he realizes something must change. He gets his coat. He considers his gun. He leaves the flat and walks to the newsagents, where he buys a pack of gum and copy of The Daily Mail, and then he walks from there to Bart’s.  
  
Molly is in the morgue. She looks surprised to see him, more surprised when he asks to speak with Lauren.  
  
“She’s gone,” she says. “I thought you knew. Not long after – well. After he,” and she clears her throat. John’s eyes tear up sympathetically. “Anyway, she went back to Germany, I guess.”  
  
John nods. He briefly imagines himself hiring a car, driving through the night, arriving on her doorstep. Molly tells him there’s no forwarding address. That wouldn't be a problem. There's always Mycroft.  
  
Sick, he thinks, and he nods and wishes her good night.  
  
“John, if there’s ever anything –“  
  
He nods. “There won’t be, but thank you.”  
  
***  
  
John is not proud, looking back, of how the next year goes. It’s not that he slides into particularly poor behavior; it’s simply that he fades. The few things he’s been doing to get himself out of the house stop, almost completely and certainly abruptly. He doesn’t turn up for the pub night anymore; he doesn’t answer his phone when Harry calls. The only thing he still manages is a talk with Peg now and then. Her husband/ex/whatever is causing her trouble, now, too, and so they are able to talk about their woes in a handy tit-for-tat way that keeps the memory of Sherlock, and the pain, alive in John. He needs that, really, because otherwise he thinks it would be possible to just stop.  
  
“Stop what?” Ella, who he’s started seeing again, says.  
  
“Stop caring,” John says automatically.  
  
“About Sherlock?”  
  
John can’t imagine that ever being true, but he nods. Then he says, “Or about everything. About anything. This – this hurt, it’s all I’ve got left of him, now. It feels a little disloyal to let it just... dissolve.”  
  
Ella is troubled enough by this to prescribe him something and suggest he think about perhaps going to stay with his sister or “someone who can help you, John, who can keep an eye out.”  
  
John realizes he’s going to either have to find a life or start convincingly faking having one in order to keep Ella from shifting him into a psychiatric ward somewhere.  
  
The latter, he decides, will be easiest.  
  
***  
  
So he does it. He tells Ella about Peg. He tells Peg about Ella. He tells Peg, also, about Sherlock, not just the bad stuff -- the vague references to "my ex" and "my old friend" are thrown out, and he starts using his name. He calls Harry again and lets her come over and babble about his terrible flat and his terrible luck, and later he tells Ella that it's working, he's really reconnecting with everyone.  
  
She seems to believe it. John is secretly pleased that he's become so good at lying. He thinks Sherlock will be -- would be proud.  
  
He goes on a date, then two, with a woman from Peg's sewing group. She's very nice -- thin, pale, nervous -- and John knows he could sleep with her and feel almost nothing. Relief, maybe, but not much more than that. He doesn't do it, but god, he comes close.  
  
He misses Sherlock that night. He sits on his bed and remembers the man's laugh, the man's hands, the man's ghostly eyes. He wonders, for the first time, if he should never have left him. They could have made it work, maybe. John could have stuck it out. The thing with Lauren wasn't real -- it wasn't what they had. Sherlock knew that, he'd had to. John would bet his life that she didn't get a postcard from Switzerland.  
  
It doesn't comfort him, suddenly, to realize that he believes this, now: he was Sherlock Holmes's last thought.  
  
***  
  
On the one-year anniversary of Sherlock’s death, John stays in London. He considered not being there. He thought, perhaps, of buying a ticket to Switzerland. He thought of going to Rome. Instead, he gets up, has a quick coffee from a kiosk, works six hours for a doctor on vacation, and stops at the chemist’s on his way back to fill his anti-depressants. He doesn’t always take them, which he knows is a bad idea, but that night he takes two and sleeps fitfully. In the morning, he gets up and does most of it over again, and the next night, he makes a stir-fry for Peg and her oldest boy and they watch a BBC documentary about the war. The lad gets choked up and John tells him it's all right, it's fine. "You should have feelings about this," he says. "It's normal, though it hurts."  
  
The boy seems to trust him. John is never sure why anyone would. Regardless, when he mentions the conversation to Ella, she seems cheered. "Maybe that's something for you," she says. "Maybe working with veterans."  
  
"Maybe," John says, and that night he really thinks about it. He makes a list of pros and cons, and realizes again the only reason he's stuck with this temp work so long is that it leaves his time free for cases. Cases he doesn't have; cases he will never have again. It would make sense to do something more stable. It would, he thinks, but he can't.   
  
But he can start to imagine a day when he might.  
  
***  
  
Four months later, on a Tuesday, John works late. He gets home after dark. He walks in, gets his mail, unlocks his door, and starts to sort through the various depressing bills before he’s even turned on the light. He flips it on and heads for the kitchen, desperate for a cuppa. He grabs the kettle, adds water, and then keeps going through the mail. At the bottom of the stack, there’s a postcard.  
  
It has a picture of the Swiss Alps on the front. John swallows and steadies himself on the counter.  
  
 _We talked of traveling, once. To see an exhibit. Do you remember?_  
  
It hits him like a wave, a cold ocean wave; he is shivering in his kitchen, holding the card. The kettle begins to whistle but it can’t be hot yet, it hasn’t even been a minute. He’s just standing there, holding the postcard. It is stamped from Switzerland. He is covered in cold sweat.  
  
He doesn’t think about what he does next. He packs: pants, trousers, three shirts, a book. His passport. His gun. His shaving kit and toothbrush. An extra sweater. His phone, his computer, his charger. He puts the gun back after a long moment, then tucks the postcard into his front jacket pocket and runs out the door.  
  
He takes a cab to the train station and gets a ticket on the Eurostar to Zurich. He wakes to the brutal Swiss landscape. He’s been here before and thought it beautiful, but now the entire country makes him cold and nervous. When they arrive in Zurich, he learns there will be a four-hour wait for the next train to Rome. He’s able to secure only a two-person cabin with no guarantee of privacy, but that’s fine. He takes a cup of tea and a sandwich in the cafeteria while he waits on his train. He sips his lukewarm, godawful tea and begins to wonder what in the world he’s doing here. Rome is gigantic; the world is gigantic. Sherlock, also, is dead. This could be a trap. Perhaps they never caught all of Moriarty’s men. John was foolish not to call anyone – but who would he call?  
  
If this is it, he thinks, if there is nothing there, if it is a trap and this is the end, then let it be. Let me fall and fail chasing this hope, that he is still out there, that I won’t believe the proof until I’ve seen it myself.  
  
In his cabin on the train, he is joined by an elderly gentleman who speaks only Italian. John is rubbish at languages other than his own; he proved that in Afghanistan, again and again, so he just nods at the man and tries to show he’s interested only in sleeping by turning his head to the window. It will be dark soon. They will travel the mountains after dark. John will be glad to get out of the country.  
  
The train lurches forward. The old man’s book falls to the floor, and John bends to get it for him. When he hands it over, the old man doesn’t take it immediately, leaving John leaning close.  
  
“You haven’t even said hello, John.”  
  
John looks straight at the old man’s eyes. They briefly smooth, as do the lines around his mouth. There’s a fiery blue in his eyes that John hasn’t seen – that he has  _dreamt_  of for a year. Maybe longer.  
  
“Hello,” he says, and Sherlock smiles.  
  
“You came.”  
  
“Yes, I – of course,” John says. “You died.”  
  
“Of course,” Sherlock says. He takes off the wretched little cap, and with it comes the scraggly white hair. It takes only the quickest pulls to also remove the rubbery flesh that rounds out his cheeks, and then it’s just Sherlock across from him, smelling like glue and baby powder, wearing a shabby suit, and looking so very, clearly alive.  
  
“Where have you been?”  
  
“A bit of everywhere, and also nowhere. It’s a terribly boring story. I’d meant to travel for longer, but it does become a bit tricky to go anywhere on a dead man’s passport.”  
  
John nods. “You – at the Falls. I was told you’d died.“  
  
“I did rather think to,” Sherlock says, too matter-of-factly. “It seemed fitting. And he wouldn’t go without immense – encouragement.”  
  
“But?”  
  
“But, I survived. It took some work. Some time. But I did make it through.” He looks at John in a fully appraising look. “I see you’re about the same.”  
  
John isn’t sure what he means. The same as he was when Sherlock left, or the same as Sherlock – fighting for survival, not always succeeding? It could be either or both.  
  
“I have wanted to see this exhibit for a while,” Sherlock says, leaning back in his seat. “But I’ve thought that it wouldn’t be the same without you.” His eyes meet John’s. “Nothing is.”  
  
“That’s what you’ve learned? From dying, from – from all of this?”  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock says. He looks, just for a moment, confused, or frightened. Unsure.  
  
“Good,” John says. “Never do any of it again.”  
  
“I promise.”  
  
***  
  
Later, in their hotel in Rome, they lie in bed and John looks at Sherlock’s body, really looks at it. He’s thin and pale; he has new scars on his chest and back and a long, ugly incision mark on his thigh. From this, he’s sure Sherlock would be able to tell someone’s entire missing year as a story. John can’t tell anything much except Sherlock has been out in the world, hurt, possibly hungry, and alone. He traces the incision on his leg. “Broken,” Sherlock says. “Rather badly.”  
  
John nods. He rests his head on Sherlock’s stomach, facing him. “Why did you do it?”  
  
Sherlock touches his hair. “I didn’t think you’d want me back. I am, after all, rather horrible to you.”  
  
“I didn’t want you back,” John says. He watches that register, watches Sherlock’s face twitch with the tiniest spark of hurt. “But I also did. Every day.”  
  
“I will hurt you again,” Sherlock says. “Never – never like that. I will be faithful, John. God knows you’ve been more faithful than I’ve deserved.”  
  
“Yes,” John says. “I’ll probably hurt you, too. But for Christ’s sake, let’s be alive to do it.” He catches Sherlock’s hand, makes it still. “I don’t want you running around without me. It’s not right.”  
  
“That’s good,” Sherlock says. “Because I don’t want to do it alone, and you're the only person I've ever wanted at my side.”  
  
It will be exhausting, John thinks. It will be hard. He won’t trust Sherlock for a long time – but he already does. Sherlock came back from the dead to be with him, and him alone.  
  
It means something. 


End file.
